The Ghostwriter(77)
Silence.
He rises and goes to the room that she left, the door wide open, and he glances in, surprised to see a fully furnished space—a theater room that Maggie would fall in love with. Flipping off the light switch, he closes the door, a key still stuck in the lock. Returning to the office, he settles onto the couch, propping his feet on the end of it and folding his arms across his chest. Staring up at the ceiling, he wonders what she is doing.
“I’ll write it. But I need you to leave me alone to do it.”
There is a fine line between leaving her alone and neglect. At some point, she’ll need food. Medicine. Sleep. He glances at the clock, and considers an interruption. Considers telling her about Charlotte Blanton, and her mention of an article.
He’ll give her a few more hours. But then, if she is still awake, he’ll bring her something to eat. He closes his eyes, and relaxes against the leather cushion.
Three hours later, there is no response to his knock, and he quietly turns the knob and cracks open the door, tilting his head inside. The light from the hall first illuminates a child’s light switch, Beauty and the Beast dancing around the edge. The walls are a pale pink, the carpet cream. He sees the edge of a dollhouse and instantly, soberly, understands. He carefully steps inside and stops, looking down at her. A nightlight plays gently over the scene—her body curled around the notebook, her hand possessively over the top of the page, words half filling the space. Her eyes are closed, her body slack, and he bends over to pick her up, and then stops. In two months, it is the first time she has looked at peace, the lines in her forehead slack, her expression calm, her fists uncurled. His eyes move to the page, where a dozen lines repeat the same thing.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
He ignores the other pages, a sea of them across the floor, underneath her elbow and head, pages upon pages of story. Instead, he grabs a blanket from the floor, stretching it over her body, then steps backwards, gently closing the door. Returning to the office, he stretches back out on the couch and closes his eyes.
A love story has a series of requirements, an equation for success. Love + Loyalty = Happily Ever After. I’ve written and read enough in this life to understand that an equation for success rarely produces it, but that breaking the rules typically guarantees failure. I think marriage is the same way.
Can you love a monster? I did. I loved him, and I hated him, both for the entirely wrong reasons.
Did we have loyalty? No. I was more loyal to my books, to my words, to my characters, than I was to him. He was more loyal to his secrets, his crimes, his perversions, than to me.
Was there a Happily Ever After? I told you, early on in this book, the chances of that.
I wake up on Bethany’s floor, my neck sore, a page sticking to my palm when I lift it. I assemble the loose papers, turn to the last chapter, and write the book’s final scene. I have written a lot of The Ends in my lifetime. This one is both the hardest, and the easiest, I have ever written. I print the letters in a neat script, then slide the page off my lap, letting it flutter to the floor with the others.
Done. My story, start to finish. I’ve spent the last six weeks thinking that I wouldn’t be able to tell it, wouldn’t be able to walk back through that day, through those terrible moments. Now that I have, I feel lighter, as if I’ve physically stripped the moments from my heart and transferred them to the page. They say confession cleans the soul. I should have confessed a long time ago.
I close my eyes and sit back against the wall, stretching out my legs and flexing my fingers. Now that I am finished, there is only one thing I want to do.
I move slowly to my feet, my back protesting, my chest tight from the hours of constriction. I crack the wrists of each hand as I move quietly out to the hall, passing the office, Mark’s snores coming quietly through the open door, and continue to my old bedroom. Going inside, I use the restroom, then stand at the sink, meeting my eyes in the reflection as I wash my hands.
Am I ready?
I turn off the water and lean forward, examining myself. I look like death. I feel even worse. At the moment, the only thing that doesn’t hurt is my mind. I reach down and open the center drawer of the vanity, pulling out the only thing in there, a small white vial of liquid. Four ounces of peace. Four ounces of surrender.
Am I ready?
I pull it out and set it on the table.
MARK
The hand is soft but insistent, pushing against his shoulder, and he jerks awake, his back wrenching painfully as he sits up.
“Shit.” Helena’s voice moves, and there is the stumble of feet across the rug. “You scared me.”
He blinks, trying to see in the dark. “What time is it?”
“Late. I finished. Can you read it?”
He moves a foot onto the floor, pressing on his lower back as he sits fully upright. “Now?”
“No, Steinbeck. In the morning. I just woke you up to ask you the question.”
He can see more now. The hang of her dark hair, the outline of her glasses. She stands in the middle of the room, clutching a stack of pages. A ghost, that’s what she looks like, the pajamas hanging off her frame, her long fingers skeleton-like in their clutch. “You’re being sarcastic.”